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Abstract:

The policy perspective we will argue for in this paper has three broad aspects. First,
we will argue that policies of redistribution that have an explicit regional emphasis
are unlikely to be justified in Ireland's unitary State. Second, we will stress the
importance of agglomeration economies in sustaining regional productivity
imbalances at least in the 1990s. Third, we will argue that there is a key role for
State investment strategies and user-cost pricing schemes which concentrate on
expanding the commuting compass of those existing centres of concentration that
have sufficient critical mass to generate and re-generate agglomeration economies. - [Extract p.3]